The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes eBook

“I must have drunk too much whisky,” he
said to himself, angrily. “Good heavens!
Fancy sinking to Mary Ann. If Peter had only seen—­There
was infinitely more poetry in that red-cheeked Maedchen,
and yet I never—­It is true-there is something
sordid about the atmosphere that subtly permeates
you, that drags you down to it. Mary Ann!
A transpontine drudge! whose lips are fresh from the
coalman’s and the butcher’s. Phaugh!”

The fancy seized hold of his imagination. He
could not shake it off, he could not sleep till he
had got out of bed and sponged his lips vigorously.

Meanwhile Mary Ann was lying on her bed, dressed,
doing her best to keep her meaningless, half-hysterical
sobs from her mistress’s keen ear.

II

It was a long time before Mary Ann came so prominently
into the centre of Lancelot’s consciousness
again. She remained somewhere in the outer periphery
of his thought—­nowhere near the bull’s-eye,
so to speak—­as a vague automaton that worked
when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more important
things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow
put a keener edge on his blunted self-confidence;
he had started a grand opera, and worked at it furiously
in all the intervals left him by his engrossing pursuit
after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up
from his hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side
surveying him curiously, and then he would start,
and remember he had rung her up, and try to remember
what for. And Mary Ann would turn red, as if the
fault was hers.

But the publisher was the one thing that was never
out of Lancelot’s mind, though he drove Lancelot
himself nearly out of it. He was like an arrow
stuck in the aforesaid bull’s-eye, and, the target
being conscious, he rankled sorely. Lancelot
discovered that the publisher kept a “musical
adviser,” whose advice appeared to consist of
the famous monosyllable, “Don’t.”
The publisher generally published all the musical adviser’s
own works, his advice having apparently been neglected
when it was most worth taking; at least so Lancelot
thought, when he had skimmed through a set of Lancers
by one of these worthies.

“I shall give up being a musician,” he
said to himself, grimly. “I shall become
a musical adviser.”

Once, half by accident, he actually saw a publisher.
“My dear sir,” said the great man, “what
is the use of bringing quartets and full scores to
me? You should have taken them to Brahmson; he’s
the very man you want. You know his address,
of course—­just down the street.”

Lancelot did not like to say that it was Brahmson’s
clerks that had recommended him here; so he replied,
“But you publish operas, oratorios, cantatas!”

“Ah, yes!—­h’m—­things
that have been played at the big Festivals—­composers
of prestige—­quite a different thing, sir,
quite a different thing. There’s no sale
for these things—­none at all, sir—­public
never heard of you. Now, if you were to write
some songs—­nice catchy tunes—­high
class, you know, with pretty words—­”